Zaidy036 <Zaidy036@air.isp.spam> wrote:
> On 3/4/2024 2:42 PM, Frank Slootweg wrote:
[...]
> > Indeed, some of my backup (not image, but file-level) is done to my
> > NAS and some is done to The Cloud (Google Drive). Of course Newyana2's
> > example of a power surge could take out my NAS as well, but as we
> > haven't had any such power surges for some five decades, I think I'm not
> > going to worry to much about those! :-)
[...]
> No power surge? Then you are lucky. My UPS battery needed replacement
> one afternoon and that night we had an electrical storm which must have
> been close because the next morning I found my NAS non-responsive and
> "fried". I had a copy of the last image on a portable HDD and it was
> disconnected and in a safe place.

Nope, no power surges and the five decades ago was a lightning strike
which took our most of our customer's serial interfaces.

UPSs are uncommon here (NL), except in hospitals, etc..

The grid is very stable with time between outages counted in years.

But it is probably going to get worse with all the solar panels, EVs,
electric cooking/heating, etc. making the load on the grid much higher
in a rather short timeframe. To compensate, we have a petrol/gas car and
gas heating/cooking. We're doing our bit to save others! :-)

In message <us5asv.94c.1@ID-201911.user.individual.net> at Mon, 4 Mar
2024 19:28:22, Frank Slootweg <this@ddress.is.invalid> writes
>J. P. Gilliver <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:
>> In message <us4muq.d9s.1@ID-201911.user.individual.net> at Mon, 4 Mar
>> 2024 13:48:04, Frank Slootweg <this@ddress.is.invalid> writes
>> >J. P. Gilliver <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:
>> >> In message <us3pb5$30l9r$1@dont-email.me> at Mon, 4 Mar 2024 00:22:27,
>> >> Paul in Houston TX <Paul@Houston.Texas> writes
>> >> >gfretwell@aol.com wrote:
>> >> []
>> >> >> OK Thanks. Macrium it is. I liked Acronis until it stopped working
>> >> >>but
>> >> >> they just don't want you using anymore, even if you paid for it.
>> >> >> The backup tool on the boot CD works so I have a fairly recent image
>> >> >> of my C: but I like it automatic.
>> >>
>> >> Ah, "I like it automatic" explains why Acronis "stopped working" for
>> []
>> >> The trouble with relying on automatic is that unless you check, you
>> >> don't know if it has stopped working. If you're good at doing that sort
>> []
>> > 'automatic' is probably Scheduled Backups and for Scheduled Backups,
>> >Macrium Reflect can send e-mail on Failure, Warning and Success, so I
>> >don't see how that can result in "unless you check, you don't know if it
>> >has stopped working". So unless Macrium Reflect stops working
>> >alltogether, without any errors, I see no problem with 'automatic'.
>> >
>> I didn't know about its emailing abilities (or rather I'd forgotten
>> about them), but such an arrangement does still rely on you checking -
>> for the emails.
>
> The emails will arrive in your Inbox. You *do* check your Inbox once
>in a while, don't you!? :-) With something like Thunderbird, you can Tag
>them with a colour, like nice flashy red. If that's not enough
>notification, you might as well throw the whole thing out of the window!
>:-)

Presumably you're talking about setting it to send "failed" emails. If
it just stops altogether, you won't get them.
>
>> I would also be concerned about the possibility of it
>> (or whatever's scheduling it) stopping as you describe.
>
> For those kinds of things, you can make a 'watchdog' (for example a
>.bat script). I have such a thing for a service which sometimes refuses/
>refuses to start at startup.

So you're relying on your watchdog running ... (-:

(Aside:) a colleague once included the programming of a watchdog into
something he was working on; the comments in his code included, IIRR,
"feed dog", "empty dish", and similar! (But then he had a fine sense of
humour; I think he once contrived to have a line of code similar to "if
overflow, go to loo, else go to bed".)
>
>> >[...]
>> But we are all different. What works for me, you, the OP, etc., will all
>> be different in one way or another.
>
> Very true. You feel comfortable with your offline method. Good on you.

Not _entirely_, as my portable drive is often in the same premises as
the computer. As for remembering to do it, I use a reminder software
with a snooze button, so I _am_ reminded to do it, but if I put it off,
I get nagged after the (selectable) snooze interval. (The software is
https://www.splinterware.com/products/scheduler.html - I know there's
something built in to Windows 7 and later [though I don't know if it has
a snooze function], but I'd got used to that from XP, and find it easy
to use. I have it for all sorts of reminders, such as dental
appointments.)
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Actors are fairly modest...A lot of us have quite a lot to be modest about. -
Simon Greenall (voice of Aleksandr the "Simples!" Meerkat), RT 11-17 Dec 2010

J. P. Gilliver <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:
> In message <us5asv.94c.1@ID-201911.user.individual.net> at Mon, 4 Mar
> 2024 19:28:22, Frank Slootweg <this@ddress.is.invalid> writes
> >J. P. Gilliver <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:
> >> In message <us4muq.d9s.1@ID-201911.user.individual.net> at Mon, 4 Mar
> >> 2024 13:48:04, Frank Slootweg <this@ddress.is.invalid> writes
> >> >J. P. Gilliver <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:
> >> >> In message <us3pb5$30l9r$1@dont-email.me> at Mon, 4 Mar 2024 00:22:27,
> >> >> Paul in Houston TX <Paul@Houston.Texas> writes
> >> >> >gfretwell@aol.com wrote:
> >> >> []
> >> >> >> OK Thanks. Macrium it is. I liked Acronis until it stopped working
> >> >> >>but
> >> >> >> they just don't want you using anymore, even if you paid for it.
> >> >> >> The backup tool on the boot CD works so I have a fairly recent image
> >> >> >> of my C: but I like it automatic.
> >> >>
> >> >> Ah, "I like it automatic" explains why Acronis "stopped working" for
> >> []
> >> >> The trouble with relying on automatic is that unless you check, you
> >> >> don't know if it has stopped working. If you're good at doing that sort
> >> []
> >> > 'automatic' is probably Scheduled Backups and for Scheduled Backups,
> >> >Macrium Reflect can send e-mail on Failure, Warning and Success, so I
> >> >don't see how that can result in "unless you check, you don't know if it
> >> >has stopped working". So unless Macrium Reflect stops working
> >> >alltogether, without any errors, I see no problem with 'automatic'.
> >> >
> >> I didn't know about its emailing abilities (or rather I'd forgotten
> >> about them), but such an arrangement does still rely on you checking -
> >> for the emails.
> >
> > The emails will arrive in your Inbox. You *do* check your Inbox once
> >in a while, don't you!? :-) With something like Thunderbird, you can Tag
> >them with a colour, like nice flashy red. If that's not enough
> >notification, you might as well throw the whole thing out of the window!
> >:-)
>
> Presumably you're talking about setting it to send "failed" emails. If
> it just stops altogether, you won't get them.

Yes.

> >> I would also be concerned about the possibility of it
> >> (or whatever's scheduling it) stopping as you describe.
> >
> > For those kinds of things, you can make a 'watchdog' (for example a
> >.bat script). I have such a thing for a service which sometimes refuses/
> >refuses to start at startup.
>
> So you're relying on your watchdog running ... (-:

Yes, Macrium Reflect (totally) failing *and* my watchdog failing at
the same time, is a risk I'm quite willing to take. :-)

FWIW, my service-watchdog has not yet failed in years (a decade?).
<knocks on head>.

[...]
> >> >[...]
> >> But we are all different. What works for me, you, the OP, etc., will all
> >> be different in one way or another.
> >
> > Very true. You feel comfortable with your offline method. Good on you.
>
> Not _entirely_, as my portable drive is often in the same premises as
> the computer. As for remembering to do it, I use a reminder software
> with a snooze button, so I _am_ reminded to do it, but if I put it off,
> I get nagged after the (selectable) snooze interval. (The software is
> https://www.splinterware.com/products/scheduler.html - I know there's
> something built in to Windows 7 and later [though I don't know if it has
> a snooze function], but I'd got used to that from XP, and find it easy
> to use. I have it for all sorts of reminders, such as dental
> appointments.)

Yes, I've a similar thing, 'Desktop-Reminder 2'. Coming to think of
it, I probably should write a watchdog for it, because if it fails, I'm
in deep <excrements>! :-)

BTW, one of my reminders (called 'tasks' in Desktop-Reminder 2) is
labeled 'Switch offsite backups'. You can probably guess what that's
for.

On Mon, 4 Mar 2024 20:12:52 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver" <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:

>In message <us5asv.94c.1@ID-201911.user.individual.net> at Mon, 4 Mar
>2024 19:28:22, Frank Slootweg <this@ddress.is.invalid> writes
>>J. P. Gilliver <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:
>>> I didn't know about its emailing abilities (or rather I'd forgotten
>>> about them), but such an arrangement does still rely on you checking -
>>> for the emails.
>>
>> The emails will arrive in your Inbox. You *do* check your Inbox once
>>in a while, don't you!? :-) With something like Thunderbird, you can Tag
>>them with a colour, like nice flashy red. If that's not enough
>>notification, you might as well throw the whole thing out of the window!
>>:-)
>
>Presumably you're talking about setting it to send "failed" emails. If
>it just stops altogether, you won't get them.

I always configure Macrium Reflect to send emails for each of its 3 statuses,
Success, Warning, and Failure. Further, I configure it to attach its two log
files to the Warning and Failure emails so I can see what's going on.

In addition to a desktop PC and two laptops in my house, I'm responsible for two
of my sisters, or rather their laptops. I configured each of them to store
their backups on my disk pool, if it's available (via the Internet), with
fallback to local storage. It's been a couple of years with no problems so far.
One of my favorite features is that storage capability where you specify a
primary location, and a secondary to be used only if the primary is unavailable.

"J. P. Gilliver" <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote

| >> There's also
| >> the possibility of corruption or malware getting spread to backup.
| >
| > True, but that's the case for any kind of backup.
| | Indeed.

If you set up Windows and then image it. there's virtually no
risk of malware. You have a pristine image. If you also back up
data then you're ready to put things back to normal if necessary.
If you do an incremental backup then if you ever encounter
malware it will be added to the backup.

It's fine to do a RAID-style backup, but it shouldn't be
mistaken for a real backup. If the computer is damaged,
stolen, etc, then your incremental backup will be useless.
So you have to think of it that way: If your computer is stolen
tomorrow, do you have backup?
Incremental backup is really only good for one thing: a failed
disk. For that I use redundant disks on each computer.

The reason I brought this up is because a lot of people
think incremental backup and disk image backup are the
same. Disk image backup means you have an ISO ready to
write to disk, should you need to. That ISO shouldn't be on
the computer and it doesn't need updated data. The data
can be backed up separately.

"Zaidy036" <Zaidy036@air.isp.spam> wrote

| No power surge? Then you are lucky. My UPS battery needed replacement
| one afternoon and that night we had an electrical storm which must have
| been close because the next morning I found my NAS non-responsive and
| "fried". I had a copy of the last image on a portable HDD and it was
| disconnected and in a safe place.

I've had a similar experience twice. Once I think was around '99.
There was a northeast US power failure. A surge resulted. My
whole system burned out. Minor surges can actually be daily
occurences in some places, if people don't use a UPS.

The second case for me was one time when I decided to
put a CD writer into a computer. I had used that CD writer before,
but somehow something went wrong. I smelled smoke and before
I could shut it off, something blew. All components were
burned out.

On Mon, 4 Mar 2024 06:57:40 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver" <G6JPG@255soft.uk>
wrote:

>In message <us3pb5$30l9r$1@dont-email.me> at Mon, 4 Mar 2024 00:22:27,
>Paul in Houston TX <Paul@Houston.Texas> writes
>>gfretwell@aol.com wrote:
>[]
>>> OK Thanks. Macrium it is. I liked Acronis until it stopped working
>>>but
>>> they just don't want you using anymore, even if you paid for it.
>>> The backup tool on the boot CD works so I have a fairly recent image
>>> of my C: but I like it automatic.
>
>Ah, "I like it automatic" explains why Acronis "stopped working" for
>you: I presume by "automatic", you mean it runs under Windows. (Macrium
>will indeed do that for you too, including - as I think most of them
>will, even the free versions - deleting the oldest image when necessary
>to make space for the newest).
>
>The trouble with relying on automatic is that unless you check, you
>don't know if it has stopped working. If you're good at doing that sort
>of checking, fine; automatic (assuming it actually makes a valid image
>when running under Windows) certainly is less bother, as you can
>schedule it to run when you're not using the machine, such as (for most
>people) in the small hours. You're at the mercy of Windows updates, i.
>e. the possibility that one of them will stop it working; this thread is
>in the W7 newsgroup so that won't bother us, but 10 (and 11 and ...) may
>be different.
>>
>>I used to use Acronis and liked it but it was from Western Digital and
>>WD spinner specific. So when I went to all solid state drives I tried
>>several other backups and settled on Macrium. I use it to image and
>
>I think some of the make-specific versions work as long as there is one
>drive from the qualifying manufacturer in the system - at least, that
>used to be the case (I think); I don't know if it still is.
>
>>also clone. Especially on the work comps. If something goes wrong
>>with a drive I can swap to the clone and be back in operation in just a
>>few minutes.
>
>That does require you to have multiple drives. If some of your computers
>are for your work, then that's reasonable.
>
>>I also use FreeFileSync for the data files. IMO, it's a great program, too.
>
>It's easy to use/understand. It _doesn't_ track renames (which I _think_
>the Russinovitch one I used to use - SyncToy I think - did: but I got
>the feeling that wasn't copying all files); if you rename a file (let
>alone a folder/directory), FreeFileSync just deletes (the backup copy)
>and recopies, rather than renaming the backup. But I'll continue using
>it!

I have a cabinet full of drives so that is not an issue. I used to use
the Maxtor disk wizard, a stand alone program and it would work if any
Maxtor drive reported, even if it wouldn't come ready. Back in the
IDE days that was easy if you had a spare address. (1 of 4).
I do look at my archive occasionally just to see how I am doing. So
far the Acronis always worked for me. I also have several old C:
drives with whatever was on them when I took them out so as long as I
still have that machine (driver stuff) they are hot spares, even if I
am setting the Wayback machine.
I did find one interesting thing. Running the OEM W/7 load, I had a
couple of identical Dells and I just built one up, cloned the drive
and put it in the other one, it worked fine.
The same deal worked on identical HP laptops with W/10, upgraded to 11
and that shocked me. I thought there was some kind of hardware
verification. Both machines did have valid COAs tho. It may have had
something to do with having the MS account set up. It is all a
mystery to me.
I know W/7 and XP are both in "We don't care anymore" category at MS.
They seem to authorize anything with a good 25 digit hash, even if you
use the same one on different machines.

On Mon, 4 Mar 2024 04:25:34 -0500, Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:

>On 3/3/2024 12:02 AM, gfretwell@aol.com wrote:
>> I have been using Acronis 2015 for years but they seemed have just
>> abandoned it. I am trying to reinstall and it just sits there with the
>> activate button grayed out. There is no support and it is just a
>> coaster now.
>> They don't even sell a product to replace it other than some $50 a
>> year subscription with a lot of stuff I don't want. What is everyone
>> using these days?
>>
>
>There is some dribble here, but I presume you're stuck at some step in all this.
>
>https://kb.acronis.com/ati2015/moveactivation
>
>*******
>
>The raymondcc site is gone. The backup comparison article, does not
>compare the latest and greatest version of each (especially as Acronis
>has gone off-track in terms of backups).
>
>https://whatsoftware.com/10-commercial-disk-imaging-software-features-and-backuprestore-speed-comparison/
>
> # There is a separate table of "free" programs. Three have incremental.
>
> https://whatsoftware.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/free_image_backup_results.png
>
> AOMEI Backupper
> EaseUs Todo Backup
> Paragon Backup & Recovery (in business?)
>
>Macrium (paid) has Incremental Forever. That's where it does Incremental
>like others would do it, and it does some sort of Synthetic Full at
>some point, to "restart the incremental sequence". That's so not
>too many incrementals are stacked on top of one another. Personally,
>I still like the idea of the occasional "real" Full, so I know I have
>integrity at some point. I expect they do have that built into the
>sequence at some point.
>
>I just do the occasional full myself, as that's something I can do when
>nothing else is going on.
>
>The comparison article, likely uses hard drives, and may not be
>indicative of what using a room full of SSDs could sustain. For example,
>Macrium upper speed limit comes from whatever it uses for a checksum,
>and the checksum process may not be running on a separate CPU core.
>Same goes for compression processes. Tools which run their compressor
>on other cores, may go faster (if you choose to compress your backups).
>
>While the tables are arranged as if it's some sort of race, the way
>the test is conducted, is not really emphasizing speed over everything
>else, as you'd have to take I/O speed out of the picture, to see what
>they're really capable of. The main purpose of those tables, is to
>spot softwares which are "egregiously" slow, programs that don't have an
>excuse for being that bad. DriveImage XML was originally a kind of "demo"
>program, and it was unclear whether the author of it was serious
>about going commercial, or in improving the program.
>
>And no matter what you use, you need to test it. That means
>having some scratch drives for test backup and test restore.
>And seeing what has gone missing.
>
> Paul

I saw that but it is not the message I get. This just says it can't
write the value (a bunch of them) and I can't even get Regedit to open
the Acronis fields. I am administrator.
I think this might work if it would just load the software from the
disk but it down;loads the one from the host.
Maybe I will try it again after a cleanup with the cable unplugged so
it can't see the internet.

On Mon, 4 Mar 2024 08:14:17 -0500, "Newyana2"
<Newyana2@invalid.nospam> wrote:

>"J. P. Gilliver" <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote
>
>| Ah, "I like it automatic" explains why Acronis "stopped working" for
>| you: I presume by "automatic", you mean it runs under Windows. (Macrium
>| will indeed do that for you too, including - as I think most of them
>| will, even the free versions - deleting the oldest image when necessary
>| to make space for the newest).
>|
>| The trouble with relying on automatic is that unless you check, you
>| don't know if it has stopped working.
>
> Another issue is that that approach is not really disk image backup.
>It's just backup, like the idea of a RAID array. If you get, for example,
>a power surge that takes out your drives then you're out of luck,
>because you don't actually have a stored disk image. There's also
>the possibility of corruption or malware getting spread to backup.
>
> There's nothing wrong with RAID approach, but people shouldn't
>mistake that for disk image backup.
>

I frequently copy my images and other stuff I care about to an offline
drive (rotating 2 drives)

On Mon, 4 Mar 2024 14:50:28 -0500, Zaidy036 <Zaidy036@air.isp.spam>
wrote:

>On 3/4/2024 2:42 PM, Frank Slootweg wrote:
>> J. P. Gilliver <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote:
>>> In message <us4pvm.o9o.1@ID-201911.user.individual.net> at Mon, 4 Mar
>>> 2024 14:39:48, Frank Slootweg <this@ddress.is.invalid> writes
>>>> Newyana2 <Newyana2@invalid.nospam> wrote:
>>>>> "J. P. Gilliver" <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote
>>>>>
>>>>> | Ah, "I like it automatic" explains why Acronis "stopped working" for
>>>>> | you: I presume by "automatic", you mean it runs under Windows. (Macrium
>>>>> | will indeed do that for you too, including - as I think most of them
>>>>> | will, even the free versions - deleting the oldest image when necessary
>>>>> | to make space for the newest).
>>>>> |
>>>>> | The trouble with relying on automatic is that unless you check, you
>>>>> | don't know if it has stopped working.
>>>>>
>>>>> Another issue is that that approach is not really disk image backup.
>>>>
>>>> Huh? Of course it's disk image backup.
>>>
>>> I agree.
>>> []
>>>>> If you get, for example,
>>>>> a power surge that takes out your drives then you're out of luck,
>>>>> because you don't actually have a stored disk image.
>>>>
>>>> It seems you're assuming that the image backup is made to an internal
>>>> disk. That might be the case, but the OP (gfretwell@aol.com) hasn't
>>>> said he makes backup to an internal disk. For example I make image
>>>> backup to an external disk and that disk is stored offsite and swapped
>>>> with another disk. So my backup is protected against the scenario you
>>>> mention, but also against theft, fire, etc..
>>>>
>>> That does require manual moving about of discs - he wants something
>>> automatic.
>>
>> True, but that the backup phase is automatic, doesn't mean that the
>> moving about of disks can't be manual, i.e. the disk can be connected
>> (well) before the backup is scheduled and disconnected (well) after the
>> backup has run.
>>
>>> But, as you say, he hasn't said it's to a disc in the same
>>> machine as the one being backed up - it could be to a network drive, or
>>> even a remote one.
>>
>> Indeed, some of my backup (not image, but file-level) is done to my
>> NAS and some is done to The Cloud (Google Drive). Of course Newyana2's
>> example of a power surge could take out my NAS as well, but as we
>> haven't had any such power surges for some five decades, I think I'm not
>> going to worry to much about those! :-)
>>
>>>>> There's also
>>>>> the possibility of corruption or malware getting spread to backup.
>>>>
>>>> True, but that's the case for any kind of backup.
>>>
>>> Indeed.
>>> []
>No power surge? Then you are lucky. My UPS battery needed replacement
>one afternoon and that night we had an electrical storm which must have
>been close because the next morning I found my NAS non-responsive and
>"fried". I had a copy of the last image on a portable HDD and it was
>disconnected and in a safe place.

I did lightning protection as a service from IBM in the lightning
capital of the US. I have pretty good surge protection. That doesn't
really bother me. We had a thousand customers who were not willing to
turn off their machines every afternoon and unplug them. We took our
lightning calls down from several a week to a couple a year, usually
because they did something dumb. I still keep 2 rotating offline
drives in my safe and "sneaker net" the data to them..

On 05/03/2024 01:24, Newyana2 wrote:
>
> The reason I brought this up is because a lot of people
> think incremental backup and disk image backup are the
> same. Disk image backup means you have an ISO ready to
> write to disk, should you need to. That ISO shouldn't

.... only ...

> be on
> the computer and it doesn't need updated data. The data
> can be backed up separately.

.... with the above correction I can agree with you. It makes some sense
to have your latest disk-image backup of your system drive on your data
drive, as long as space allows, because:
+ It will be backed up automatically by your usual data backup regime;
+ Restoration is quicker than it would be over a network.

--

Fake news kills!

I may be contacted via the contact address given on my website:
www.macfh.co.uk

"Java Jive" <java@evij.com.invalid> wrote

| ... with the above correction I can agree with you. It makes some sense
| to have your latest disk-image backup of your system drive on your data
| drive, as long as space allows, because:
| + It will be backed up automatically by your usual data backup regime;
| + Restoration is quicker than it would be over a network.
|

I don't have an automated "usual data backup regime".
I maintain disk images. I back up timely data regularly to
DVD. Other data like photos are kept on separate partitions
and get copied to DVD/USB sticks or old hard disks very
occasionally. I also keep copies of those things in a safe
deposit box.

I have copies of my disk images on data partitions. But
I also back them up elsewhere. People have different methods.
The final test: If you lose your computer somehow, do you
still have backup? Do you have an ISO that can go onto
a repaired or replaced computer? If not then it's just a home
made RAID array.

That's an important distinction. When disk image backup
became popular, a lot of people were buying Acronis for $100
because it was no-brain backup. But it wasn't true disk image
backup. For that people need to understand at least a little of
OSs, partitions and now EFI.

But everyone's different. I have a friend who pays substantially
to a tech support person, who simply set her up with a product
called Aconite -- total backup remotely. I think it's over $100 per
year. I had another friend who called me about her computer failing.
I asked her what she'd lost that she needed back. Nothing. She
used it for gmail and to print out plane flight passes. She could
have her daughter re-send the baby pictures. For her the computer
was an access device, not a work or storage device.

I suppose that's probably increasingly true. I'm surprised at
how many people have replaced a computer with a cellphone.
Then they use gmail and retail "apps".

In message <us7377$3oq82$1@dont-email.me> at Tue, 5 Mar 2024 07:29:24,
Newyana2 <Newyana2@invalid.nospam> writes
[]
>The final test: If you lose your computer somehow, do you
>still have backup? Do you have an ISO that can go onto
>a repaired or replaced computer? If not then it's just a home
>made RAID array.

That's a very important distinction: are you concerned about restoring a
working computer, or just data.
[]
> But everyone's different. I have a friend who pays substantially
>to a tech support person, who simply set her up with a product
>called Aconite -- total backup remotely. I think it's over $100 per
>year. I had another friend who called me about her computer failing.
>I asked her what she'd lost that she needed back. Nothing. She
>used it for gmail and to print out plane flight passes. She could
>have her daughter re-send the baby pictures. For her the computer
>was an access device, not a work or storage device.

So she's using her daughter as the backup device (-:.
>
> I suppose that's probably increasingly true. I'm surprised at
>how many people have replaced a computer with a cellphone.
>Then they use gmail and retail "apps".
>
That's almost entirely data (and emails). Fine, if you really are just
using the computer (or 'phone) as an access device, i. e. you wouldn't
be that bothered if you had to replace it with a different device. My
main reason for imaging is that I have much software set up how I want
it, and it takes me weeks, months, or years to get it back to that state
- and I can't remember (may never have known!) how I got some of those
setups to that condition. [I guess I'm imaging against hard disk
failure, or corruption/ransomware; if I had to replace the whole
computer with something different, I'd probably have to set up
everything again anyway.] I back up the data that represents most effort
- genealogical and emails - on a frequent basis, and all my data less
frequently, but those are just data backups, basically copying (albeit
with FreeFileSync), not images.
>
>
>
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Very funny, Scotty. Now beam down my clothes

On Tue, 5 Mar 2024 10:19:05 +0000, Java Jive <java@evij.com.invalid>
wrote:

>On 05/03/2024 01:24, Newyana2 wrote:
>>
>> The reason I brought this up is because a lot of people
>> think incremental backup and disk image backup are the
>> same. Disk image backup means you have an ISO ready to
>> write to disk, should you need to. That ISO shouldn't
>
>... only ...
>
>> be on
>> the computer and it doesn't need updated data. The data
>> can be backed up separately.
>
>... with the above correction I can agree with you. It makes some sense
>to have your latest disk-image backup of your system drive on your data
>drive, as long as space allows, because:
> + It will be backed up automatically by your usual data backup regime;
> + Restoration is quicker than it would be over a network.

I have a "backup" mirrored set on both of my production machines that
gets synched with the offline backup regularly. It is a pair of
separate drives but I also understand an encryption pirate would
encrypt them too so I keep copies offline.

On Tue, 5 Mar 2024 12:57:58 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver" <G6JPG@255soft.uk>
wrote:

>In message <us7377$3oq82$1@dont-email.me> at Tue, 5 Mar 2024 07:29:24,
>Newyana2 <Newyana2@invalid.nospam> writes
>[]
>>The final test: If you lose your computer somehow, do you
>>still have backup? Do you have an ISO that can go onto
>>a repaired or replaced computer? If not then it's just a home
>>made RAID array.
>
>That's a very important distinction: are you concerned about restoring a
>working computer, or just data.
>[]
>> But everyone's different. I have a friend who pays substantially
>>to a tech support person, who simply set her up with a product
>>called Aconite -- total backup remotely. I think it's over $100 per
>>year. I had another friend who called me about her computer failing.
>>I asked her what she'd lost that she needed back. Nothing. She
>>used it for gmail and to print out plane flight passes. She could
>>have her daughter re-send the baby pictures. For her the computer
>>was an access device, not a work or storage device.
>
>So she's using her daughter as the backup device (-:.
>>
>> I suppose that's probably increasingly true. I'm surprised at
>>how many people have replaced a computer with a cellphone.
>>Then they use gmail and retail "apps".
>>
>That's almost entirely data (and emails). Fine, if you really are just
>using the computer (or 'phone) as an access device, i. e. you wouldn't
>be that bothered if you had to replace it with a different device. My
>main reason for imaging is that I have much software set up how I want
>it, and it takes me weeks, months, or years to get it back to that state
>- and I can't remember (may never have known!) how I got some of those
>setups to that condition. [I guess I'm imaging against hard disk
>failure, or corruption/ransomware; if I had to replace the whole
>computer with something different, I'd probably have to set up
>everything again anyway.] I back up the data that represents most effort
>- genealogical and emails - on a frequent basis, and all my data less
>frequently, but those are just data backups, basically copying (albeit
>with FreeFileSync), not images.
>>
>>
>>

Exactly. I keep my C: as small as I can by only having the OS and
installed software on it. That needs to be an image to be useful. Data
is just data and a simple copy does the trick but installed software
is more complicated to reproduce ever since the "Registry" became a
thing. (XP)
You could copy a W/98 system with XCOPY and the right switches. SHERC
as I recall but it has been a while. Even in those days I kept C: for
software and D: for data.

In message <gp6eui9ms0nc6vui3dap8ogo7ejmivdmus@4ax.com> at Tue, 5 Mar
2024 08:22:11, gfretwell@aol.com writes
[]
>Exactly. I keep my C: as small as I can by only having the OS and
>installed software on it. That needs to be an image to be useful. Data

Me too (50G for my current 7 setup). OS, software, and that data which a
few softwares insist on putting on C (or in a few cases where it's such
a small amount it's not worth arguing with the software).

>is just data and a simple copy does the trick but installed software
>is more complicated to reproduce ever since the "Registry" became a
>thing. (XP)

I'm convinced the registry was initially _mainly_ an antipiracy measure,
where obfuscation of how it works was understandable (using keys etc. of
obscure names, putting them in unexpected places, and so on). Some
_slight_ justification across common things, like office suites, too.
Unfortunately that then allowed programmers to become lazy, and (a) use
it for everything (b) continue not to use meaningful names or care where
they put things.

I still think, for most software, .ini files are (were) superior. Yes,
they can be slower - but copies can be kept in memory while the software
is running, so that isn't that much of an argument. But we'll never get
back to them now.

>You could copy a W/98 system with XCOPY and the right switches. SHERC
>as I recall but it has been a while. Even in those days I kept C: for
>software and D: for data.

Ditto.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Very funny, Scotty. Now beam down my clothes

On 3/5/2024 2:20 AM, gfretwell@aol.com wrote:

>
> I have a cabinet full of drives so that is not an issue. I used to use
> the Maxtor disk wizard, a stand alone program and it would work if any
> Maxtor drive reported, even if it wouldn't come ready. Back in the
> IDE days that was easy if you had a spare address. (1 of 4).
> I do look at my archive occasionally just to see how I am doing. So
> far the Acronis always worked for me. I also have several old C:
> drives with whatever was on them when I took them out so as long as I
> still have that machine (driver stuff) they are hot spares, even if I
> am setting the Wayback machine.
> I did find one interesting thing. Running the OEM W/7 load, I had a
> couple of identical Dells and I just built one up, cloned the drive
> and put it in the other one, it worked fine.
> The same deal worked on identical HP laptops with W/10, upgraded to 11
> and that shocked me. I thought there was some kind of hardware
> verification. Both machines did have valid COAs tho. It may have had
> something to do with having the MS account set up. It is all a
> mystery to me.
> I know W/7 and XP are both in "We don't care anymore" category at MS.
> They seem to authorize anything with a good 25 digit hash, even if you
> use the same one on different machines.
>

I occasionally run a Verify on my MRIMG files here, and
this activity *did* detect a problem. I was able to determine
the WinXP machine had bad RAM on it, just by using Macrium Verify.
After the RAM was changed out, the MRIMG files "became good again"
when I tested by making brand new ones and immediately doing Verify.

Running a Verify on any fresh ones at that point, they were good.

Verify is like Restore, only without Restoring. It's like
allowing the writes from the Restore, to go to /dev/null.

*******

Even if you did backups by using "dd" and you transferred
every stinking sector, you could do

sha1sum tuesday.bin

and generate a checksum when the backup was made. Then, a year
from now

sha1sum tuesday.bin

If the value has changed, the backup is now "bad".

If you were using a dumbass method like that, you can add
PAR2 blocks to "make a champ out of it". The situation
of the 1TB tuesday.bin file, is not hopeless. You can
design schemes to fix it.

An example of another dumb method

sha1sum tuesday-01.bin \___ Do two backups, record both checksums.
sha1sum tuesday-02.bin / if one copy goes bad, as long as the checksum
is good on the second one, you could use it.
Of course everyone keeps various variations on
this theme, and they don't rely on just one backup drive.

That's called redundancy, 1:1 redundancy. Whereas PAR2
is closer to a 1 for N strategy.

*******

When someone mentioned RAID here, you should not RAID SSD drives
without thinking carefully about what you're doing. Normal HDD
do not correlate on failure behavior. I can have one HDD drive
failing at 5000 hours, another HDD drive failing at 50000 hours.
If I do a RAID1 mirror, there's no chance both drives will fail
on the same day.

Whereas with two brand new SSDs which are otherwise identical,
everything they do tends to correlate with their brother. And
if the write life of drive 1 blew out on Tuesday, the write life
of drive 2 could happen on Tuesday evening (now I'm screwed).

RAID was never intended as a backup. Not even close. On SSDs,
without mixing models and brands, the situation is very bad.
Whereas with HDD, the Markov chain analysis is "normal".
Things follow normal statistics with two HDD, even if they
are identical models.

Paul

Newyana2 <Newyana2@invalid.nospam> wrote:
[...]

> The final test: If you lose your computer somehow, do you
> still have backup?

Yes, I do and AFAICT all the posters in this thread do.

> Do you have an ISO that can go onto
> a repaired or replaced computer?

The disk/partition image backup files which we have are no ISOs, but
special format files (.mrimg files in the case of Macrium Reflect).

We can restore the disk/partitions by booting from 'Rescue media' (USB
memory-stick, CD/DVD, etc.), so we don't need an ISO (other than in the
corner case of a replacement computer which can't run the 'old' OS, but
in that case the replacement computer will come_with/need it's own OS).

> If not then it's just a home
> made RAID array.

As I mentioned before, disk/partition image backup a RAID are two
completely different things. Nobody but you mentioned RAID.

> That's an important distinction. When disk image backup
> became popular, a lot of people were buying Acronis for $100
> because it was no-brain backup. But it wasn't true disk image
> backup.

You keep saying that, but that doesn't make it so. Acronis, Macrium,
etc. backup *is* "true disk image backup".

> For that people need to understand at least a little of
> OSs, partitions and now EFI.

Duh!

[...]

On 3/5/2024 7:29 AM, Newyana2 wrote:

> I have copies of my disk images on data partitions. But
> I also back them up elsewhere. People have different methods.
> The final test: If you lose your computer somehow, do you
> still have backup? Do you have an ISO that can go onto
> a repaired or replaced computer? If not then it's just a home
> made RAID array.
>
> That's an important distinction. When disk image backup
> became popular, a lot of people were buying Acronis for $100
> because it was no-brain backup. But it wasn't true disk image
> backup. For that people need to understand at least a little of
> OSs, partitions and now EFI.

An old timer like yourself, might well think of a disk image as this.
A dd.exe dump. Just a bunch of sectors. Yes, this is definitely a "snapshot in time".
This could be managed as a "cloning circus". Say, two 1TB drives, one an
exact copy of another, or, a 2TB drive with a compressed copy of big.img file
as a "collection of Full disk images". Which could be decompressed and "cloned"
to the second 1TB disk on demand (say gzip piped to dd.exe for re-constitution).
This is what we did, before we had backup software.

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Big Bag of Bytes |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

Some of the old timers used to back up individual partitions with dd.exe . This
requires some knowledge of the "brittleness" of the approach. dd.exe has no
"resize" capability.

*******

Most backup softwares have a basic understanding of the component parts of the disk.
For example, the Disk Management tool that comes with windows, is not complete enough
for real disk work. That's a bit dangerous, in a discussion environment like the
one we're in right now. I have to explain to people, on occasion, why the partition
numbering is fucked up in the Windows view.

[Picture] How Windows views the drawing which follows

https://i.postimg.cc/PrzMgJZ0/my-ssd-needs-a-backup.gif

This is the level that Macrium understands it. Missing from the diagram (to avoid confusion),
are the two GPT 64KB partition tables. The secondary GPT table is up the end, no more than
one cylinder from the end of the disk drive. When you move a GPT disk between different
sized hardware, the secondary GPT serves as a "trap for the unwary". If you just dd.exe a
1TB disk to a 2TB disk, the secondary partition table is in the wrong location.

Notice how Macrium knows there is an MSR (a partition with no file system), and Macrium
makes a copy of (2) using dd.exe . Linux Gparted, refuses to touch (2), and (2) is
pure misery in terms of an item placed on disk drives (certain GParted manipulations
aren't going to work on the left side of the disk). It's nothing short of "stupid".
the person who thought of this should be fired. "Make a file system, or please be fucking off"
-- that's the rule. The GPT partition tables are bad enough as a feature, but at least
their purpose and layer in the diagram is understandable.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7
+---+-------+---------+--------+--------------+---------+----------+-------+-----------+ The two 64KB GPT
|MBR| bttrk |ESP 100MB|MSR 16MB| C: 118.7 GiB |Rec 649MB| H: 129GB |Rec 1GB| S: shared | partition tables
+---+-------+---------+--------+--------------+---------+----------+-------+-----------+ are not shown here.
|1 megabyte | Grrr^^^^

I can see some of this, in a disktype.exe dump. This records the view in both MSDOS legacy
terms, as well as GPT terms. Like a Macintosh hard drive, a Windows GPT drive has a
"get off my lawn" warning in the form of 0xEE. The 0xEE partition tells a legacy OS
that "there is no room to be adding partitions, now go away". This prevents a legacy
OS from ruining a GPT disk.

--- /dev/sda
Block device, size 3.639 TiB (4000787030016 bytes)
DOS/MBR partition map
Partition 1: 2.000 TiB (2199023255040 bytes, 4294967295 sectors from 1)
Type 0xEE (EFI GPT protective)
GPT partition map, 128 entries <=== 64KB storage used
Disk size 3.639 TiB (4000787030016 bytes, 7814037168 sectors)
Disk GUID CD4D6752-BAC8-B446-90A7-662721F0DD2D
Partition 1: 100 MiB (104857600 bytes, 204800 sectors from 2048)
Type EFI System (FAT) (GUID 28732AC1-1FF8-D211-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B)
Partition Name "EFI system partition"
Partition GUID BE145A8D-FC87-9B45-AFB1-8959CB4D727A
FAT32 file system (hints score 4 of 5)
Volume size 96 MiB (100663296 bytes, 98304 clusters of 1 KiB)
Partition 2: 16 MiB (16777216 bytes, 32768 sectors from 206848)
Type MS Reserved (GUID 16E3C9E3-5C0B-B84D-817D-F92DF00215AE)
Partition Name "Microsoft reserved partition"
Partition GUID B000A1BB-661C-7541-AF97-88BB60627F66
Partition 3: 118.7 GiB (127481675776 bytes, 248987648 sectors from 239616)
Type Basic Data (GUID A2A0D0EB-E5B9-3344-87C0-68B6B72699C7)
Partition Name "Basic data partition"
Partition GUID 6A16D60B-3608-4140-891C-792DF2C72ABD
NTFS file system
Volume size 118.7 GiB (127481675264 bytes, 248987647 sectors)
Partition 4: 649 MiB (680525824 bytes, 1329152 sectors from 249227264)
Type Unknown (GUID A4BB94DE-D106-404D-A16A-BFD50179D6AC)
Partition Name ""
Partition GUID B15ABCC3-F0C5-AE4D-838C-751EF868E237
NTFS file system
Volume size 649.0 MiB (680521728 bytes, 1329144 sectors)
Partition 5: 129.0 GiB (138510690816 bytes, 270528693 sectors from 250556416)
Type Basic Data (GUID A2A0D0EB-E5B9-3344-87C0-68B6B72699C7)
Partition Name "Basic data partition"
Partition GUID BC694DBD-BB6F-124F-B804-F32C6B9E828C
NTFS file system
Volume size 129.0 GiB (138510690304 bytes, 270528692 sectors)
Partition 6: 1.001 GiB (1074790400 bytes, 2099200 sectors from 521086976)
Type Unknown (GUID A4BB94DE-D106-404D-A16A-BFD50179D6AC)
Partition Name ""
Partition GUID CF6B38AF-C016-3F48-A84B-B310CC27C8E8
NTFS file system
Volume size 1.001 GiB (1074786304 bytes, 2099192 sectors)
Partition 7: 682.0 GiB (732331769856 bytes, 1430335488 sectors from 523186176)
Type Basic Data (GUID A2A0D0EB-E5B9-3344-87C0-68B6B72699C7)
Partition Name "Basic data partition"
Partition GUID DA97834F-DF61-974A-B913-9BD526C13C9A
NTFS file system
Volume size 682.0 GiB (732331769344 bytes, 1430335487 sectors)
Partition 8: unused

When Macrium does a restore, not only does it modify the Partition GUID (aka VolumeID),
it also edits the BCD file (has to find it first!), so that the
disk boots as it did previously. This makes the restored disk,
completely independent of any other disk in the computer (or
at least that's the design intent... YMMV).

Macrium can restore one partition at a time. During restoration,
it can change the size of a partition. I refer to this activity
(what amounts to Partition Management) as a "Drag and Drop Restore",
as it allows you to change the order of the partitions, their size,
their offset, or whatever. Or can re-lay-out the disk drive, during
restoration. I can and have used this, as time consuming as it is.
It's because some Partition Managers are particularly slow at
"doing it their way". For example, Paragon switches to using dd.exe
on some occasions, as part of partition movement. This makes me
more than a little crazy, watching this. Doing dd.exe and moving the
disk heads back and forth a million times, is not so clever.

So while in a light-handed way, this is "disk imaging" (the logical
content of the disk is captured, the boot track is stored), in other
ways it's a partition backup tool. The partitions can also be
mounted for casual examination, or pulling one file out of a 2TB MRIMG.
And, because Macrium has a tick box to "remove restrictions", when
you mount a partition, you can "see everywhere" and go places that
normally would require permissions work to get to. That's how I can
see into places that Everything.exe cannot see!

A number of other commercial products, are like this too. Acronis,
or AOMEI or Easeus, they should all be able to do stuff like this.
I just haven't had the time or inclination to test them.

Paul

"Paul" <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote

| An old timer like yourself, might well think of a disk image as this.
| A dd.exe dump. Just a bunch of sectors. Yes, this is definitely a
"snapshot in time".

I'm an oldtimer in years for some people. I'm not really
a computer oldtimer. My first computer to speak of
was Win98. My first backup tools were Partition Magic
and Drive Image. I don't do command-line unless I absolutely
have to. Life's too short.

| So while in a light-handed way, this is "disk imaging" (the logical
| content of the disk is captured, the boot track is stored), in other
| ways it's a partition backup tool. The partitions can also be
| mounted for casual examination, or pulling one file out of a 2TB MRIMG.
| And, because Macrium has a tick box to "remove restrictions", when
| you mount a partition, you can "see everywhere" and go places that
| normally would require permissions work to get to. That's how I can
| see into places that Everything.exe cannot see!
| | A number of other commercial products, are like this too. Acronis,
| or AOMEI or Easeus, they should all be able to do stuff like this.
| I just haven't had the time or inclination to test them.
|

I've just been recently discovering GPT and the GUID
complication. Up until now I haven't used it. I've been
using BootIt for all operations for a long time now. I don't
know how it compares to the others. I found it to be
dependable and very fast, so I didn't look further. When
they came out with the UEFI version I bought that, too.

One curiosity, though: If I understand you correctly,
BootIt hides the 64 KB partitions. But when setting up
a disk for OSs it creates the EFI as well as a 16 MB "Microsoft"
partition. You don't show any such partrition in your
listing. I haven't bothered to look into it. Do you
know the story on that partition?

On 3/6/2024 11:38 AM, Newyana2 wrote:
> "Paul" <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote
>
> | An old timer like yourself, might well think of a disk image as this.
> | A dd.exe dump. Just a bunch of sectors. Yes, this is definitely a
> "snapshot in time".
>
> I'm an oldtimer in years for some people. I'm not really
> a computer oldtimer. My first computer to speak of
> was Win98. My first backup tools were Partition Magic
> and Drive Image. I don't do command-line unless I absolutely
> have to. Life's too short.
>
> | So while in a light-handed way, this is "disk imaging" (the logical
> | content of the disk is captured, the boot track is stored), in other
> | ways it's a partition backup tool. The partitions can also be
> | mounted for casual examination, or pulling one file out of a 2TB MRIMG.
> | And, because Macrium has a tick box to "remove restrictions", when
> | you mount a partition, you can "see everywhere" and go places that
> | normally would require permissions work to get to. That's how I can
> | see into places that Everything.exe cannot see!
> |
> | A number of other commercial products, are like this too. Acronis,
> | or AOMEI or Easeus, they should all be able to do stuff like this.
> | I just haven't had the time or inclination to test them.
> |
>
> I've just been recently discovering GPT and the GUID
> complication. Up until now I haven't used it. I've been
> using BootIt for all operations for a long time now. I don't
> know how it compares to the others. I found it to be
> dependable and very fast, so I didn't look further. When
> they came out with the UEFI version I bought that, too.
>
> One curiosity, though: If I understand you correctly,
> BootIt hides the 64 KB partitions. But when setting up
> a disk for OSs it creates the EFI as well as a 16 MB "Microsoft"
> partition. You don't show any such partrition in your
> listing. I haven't bothered to look into it. Do you
> know the story on that partition?
>
>

[CORRECTION: GPT partition table is 128*128 = 16KB in length)

On MSDOS legacy, there was a four entry partition table inside the MBR.

On GPT disks, the 16KB GPT table (128 slots) is at either end of the disk.
I have looked at it in a hex editor, and the unused slots (9 thru 128) are
left all zeros, and this makes it hard to see the position of the top-most
slot.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7
+---+-------+---------+--------+--------------+---------+----------+-------+-----------+ The two 16KB GPT
|MBR| bttrk |ESP 100MB|MSR 16MB| C: 118.7 GiB |Rec 649MB| H: 129GB |Rec 1GB| S: shared | partition tables
+---+-------+---------+--------+--------------+---------+----------+-------+-----------+ are not shown here.
|1 megabyte | Grrr^^^^

To spot the primary GPT table, we might find the secondary GPT table on the
right, then look for a similar entry on the left. You can do that with HxD.
Turns out, it wasn't that hard to find.

[Picture] Looking at the layout with hex editor

https://i.postimg.cc/G3xL9HBc/hex-edit-gpt-4tb-drive.gif

Paul

In message <usa65c$gv0u$1@dont-email.me> at Wed, 6 Mar 2024 11:38:00,
Newyana2 <Newyana2@invalid.nospam> writes
[]
> I'm an oldtimer in years for some people. I'm not really
>a computer oldtimer. My first computer to speak of
>was Win98. My first backup tools were Partition Magic
>and Drive Image. I don't do command-line unless I absolutely
>have to. Life's too short.
[]
While for backup I find Macrium - with its GUI - more than adequate for
my needs, I don't reject command-line for everything. Sometimes there's
a command-line utility that's just so much better than the GUI
alternatives.

I have two conflicting examples: ffmpeg is, I am sure, a very powerful
utility, for all sorts of audio and video conversions. However, I've got
several GUI utilities that I know are based on it - at least, they
include ffmpeg.exe (or similar) among the other files that come with
them. They do most of what I want - i. e. there, I agree: life's too
short. On the other hand, yt-dlp is IMO excellent at what it does, but
the odd GUI wrapper for it that I've tried don't cut the mustard, so I
use its command-line version (mainly without any parameters). I've
mostly got muscle memory - I leave a command window open, and have got
used to copying the URL, then "y space alt-space E P" to use it (I've
renamed it from yt-dlp to just y).
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Advertising is legalized lying. - H.G. Wells

"J. P. Gilliver" <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote

| On the other hand, yt-dlp is IMO excellent at what it does, but
| the odd GUI wrapper for it that I've tried don't cut the mustard, so I
| use its command-line version (mainly without any parameters).

I actually wrote myself an HTA utility for that; originally
for youtube-dl, but they both work the same way. I just
copy the URL from DDG and paste it into my utility's text
field. No muss, no fuss. If I'm going to type the command line
more than once -- for any reason -- then I'll automate it.
Because it becomes easier to write a script than to do it
by hand every time.

Then I found 3dyd, which has so far worked better than the
other two, has options for format conversion, and provides
a GUI. So once again -- copy, paste, click.

My desktop has maybe 30 VBScripts and 10 HTAs. They do
various things that I've found I want to do more than once.
Some are quite complicated, like my javascript de-obfuscator.
Others do things like fix carriage returns in unix files.

In message <usbe4v$s8ub$1@dont-email.me> at Wed, 6 Mar 2024 23:00:26,
Newyana2 <Newyana2@invalid.nospam> writes
>"J. P. Gilliver" <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote
>
>| On the other hand, yt-dlp is IMO excellent at what it does, but
>| the odd GUI wrapper for it that I've tried don't cut the mustard, so I
>| use its command-line version (mainly without any parameters).
>
> I actually wrote myself an HTA utility for that; originally
>for youtube-dl, but they both work the same way. I just
>copy the URL from DDG and paste it into my utility's text
>field. No muss, no fuss. If I'm going to type the command line
>more than once -- for any reason -- then I'll automate it.
>Because it becomes easier to write a script than to do it
>by hand every time.

Presumably you keep your utility open, as I do my command window in the
yt-dlp directory. Copy, y space paste.
>
> Then I found 3dyd, which has so far worked better than the
>other two, has options for format conversion, and provides
>a GUI. So once again -- copy, paste, click.

(Again, I presume you keep it open, otherwise it's slightly more than
copy, paste, click.) Have you a link to it? I'll have a look at it. Does
it work for sites _other_ than just YT (as yt-dlp does, despite the
name), and can it _not_ do format conversion if I don't want? (I'll see
for myself if you have a link.)
>
> My desktop has maybe 30 VBScripts and 10 HTAs. They do
>various things that I've found I want to do more than once.
>Some are quite complicated, like my javascript de-obfuscator.
>Others do things like fix carriage returns in unix files.
>
I think I've used several of your utilities in the past.
>
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove
that the other party is unfit to rule - and both commonly succeed, and are
right. -H.L. Mencken, writer, editor, and critic (1880-1956)

"J. P. Gilliver" <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote

| (Again, I presume you keep it open, otherwise it's slightly more than
| copy, paste, click.)

Ah, you caught me. Yes, I have to double-click first,
to open the HTA. Then I rest up, then copy and paste. :)

I haven't actually used it for quite awhile. The latest
versions don't work on XP and keep hanging on Win7.
3DYD has neither problem.